Web Browser Device for Structured Data Extraction and Sharing via a Social Network

Abstract

A method and system for implementing a browser based information extraction and transmission method. A method and system for identifying, extracting, and transmitting predefined structured information from web pages browser interface. The extracted information is then added to a user profile on a social network and a database. The information is shared with other users who can comment, copy, vote on, or go to the original information source. The information can be combined with other extracted information to form collections for the purposes of voting on one or more items in the collection, combining multiple items to form a useful kit, saving information for later use, adding addition information such as dates and purchase location for personal inventory purposes, and for saving bookmarks to structured data.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]The present application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 583,556, filed Jan. 5, 2012, by Derek Edwin Pappas and titled “Structured Data Extraction and Sharing Via a Social Network” and U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 636,910, filed Apr. 23, 2012, by Derek Edwin Pappas and Dragan Vujovic and titled “Web Browser Device For Structured Data Extraction and Sharing Via a Social Network”, included by reference herein and for which benefit of the priority dates are hereby claimed.FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH[0002]Not applicable.SEQUENCE LISTING OR PROGRAM[0003]Not applicable.FIELD OF INVENTION[0004]The present invention relates to Internet data search and information extraction technologies and social networks.BACKGROUND[0005]Current socially curated networks contain information which is unstructured and often does not contain the meta-data associated with the images that users have uploaded or captured from another w...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0017]In accordance with the present invention, there is provided a method and system for the creation of templates, extraction of product records using the templates, categorization of the product data in the product record, normalization of the data field names and values in the product record, indexing, and tracking items of interest on the web. In addition, the product record information can be curated and integrated with the user's social graph. The information and template represent the structure and content of the data record information on the web page. The extraction template database stores the templates which are used by the external extraction button and the extraction system which extract data records from remote web pages and sends them to the search engine. The system provides significant advantages over current socially curated sites, shopping engines, and conventional search engines which typically index unstructured text from web pages or use data feeds. The creation of a central data record database by the present invention allows users at a web site to search for products efficiently. The normalized database allows users to compare products at a very detailed level using the specifications. The extraction, classification, and normalization of structured data, which are the data field values in the data records in the web page, creates structures which can be searched in the similar way that a conventional database is searched. The structured data can be compared, and analyzed unlike unstructured data which is indexed by a search engine such as Google.

Problems solved by technology

These types of socially curated websites contain unstructured data which makes it difficult to index, search, and compare different items on the social network.

Thus, it is difficult to compare different products even if they can be found on the aggregated web site, since the detailed product information is missing.

The current search process for products at shopping engines, retailers, manufacturers, and socially curated product sites is not as efficient as it can be.

However, socially curated sites do not create a template for the data record, nor extract the data record, nor transmit, nor store the entire data record from the remote web page.

Currently, socially curated sites do not do semantic analysis of the text that is extracted from the remote web site to create data records that are displayed on the user's collection.

As a consequence a robot or user cannot revisit the site and extract the full product record from the sites using a previously created template and create a product database on their respective sites.

However, the resulting HTML on two sites using the same content management system and templates are not necessarily the same.

Moreover, it is not really possible to know that two web sites have used the same content management system and templates.

Again, it is not possible to know what template was used to generate the store front, and the store front can be customized, which leads to differences between two different store fronts that were generated from the same template.

However, web masters have not embraced micro formats and only a small percentage of the web sites are currently using micro formats or any of the other industry standard structured data formats designed to assist conventional search engines in extracting structured data.

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